BT was initially a government run organisation for many years before it was privatized. So they are basically a government created monopoly which was then sold off -mostly to cronies of the government of the era.
This isn't either the free market or the competitive market at work - it is a monopoly unfairly created by the government (by which I mean the public's tax dollars) screwing everyone else over.
Yes but shouldn't Conservatives done more to cut the cord between BT and the government? Maybe broken it up? Or something. Rather than just sit on their hands?
Yeah. It's funny how conservatives the world over always talk the talk about real competition, and yet when push comes to shove they seem the least likely to actually implement it well. They want the free market, which is very rarely the same as the competitive market.
Conservatives, like Communists, wants something that can never exist so that they always have something about which to bitch when convenient, opportune, or advantageous. They gladly turn a blind eye to other non-free aspects of the market when it is to their benefit. Nobody should be shocked by such hypocrisy from politicians but when ideologues start spouting off about the free market I just stop listening.
I know your trying to take a shot, but to answer your question, yes. When did a company become responsible for governments using/misusing thier technology/product? Our own govt. (U.S.) uses Sun boxes and Cisco switches to monitor ME. Think the US government isn't using similar software/hardware to monitor dissidents (Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party, Neo Nazi, etc..). It's a snow job blaming big companies (which is all the rage today). It reminds me when global warming fired up, even the traffic reports changed: Before global warming debate: "Intoxicated man ran over a pedestrian." After: "Intoxicated driver's SUV ran over a pedestrian".
You're an idiot. As a civil society with democratic norms we draw limits to commerce all of the time. For example, we don't allow people to sell human body parts because of the perverse incentives it would create. We could, if we wanted, limit sale of such technology to those countries that misuse it and punish those countries that don't follow suit. The fact is that we, as a society, don't really care that much. Oh, we talk about how horrible it is, but when it comes to hard decisions we always take the easy way out by spouting the kind of nonsense you just did. As far as America doing it too, so what? We are talking about Iran.
That's what this report demonstrates. Rather than offering bonds that the government would pay interest on, the government could insure AAA bonds for face value and collect payment for that insurance. That would be highly manageable risk and would not make taxpayers beholden to anyone. If investors want to take more risk for more reward with CDAs or whatever then they should go for it but they are on the hook for it. This idea in the report that tax-payer money is the plaything for the rich and the world economy would collapse unless we allowed it is ridiculous.
You still have to have a cable subscription to access the content for most of this content. If anything, it's a step forward in killing the standalone set-top box. This hurts set-top box manufacturers, AppleTV, GoogleTV, and Boxee.
I don't think they've taken a principled stand on anything. And they don't claim to either. They are in it for the lulz. That's it. The tendency to see them as somehow "sticking it to the man" through acts of civil disobedience is totally misplaced.
Due to the extensive illegal use of their product, police have asked Remington to stop the Mexican drug trade.
I like your analogy and I don't support the UK government but if you have knowledge of a crime and do nothing you are an accessory. In this case I think the government will need to prove Google "knows" about a crime.
he set out to build the deepest diving research sub in the world;
Someone should point out that he's a few years late to the race, Trieste did it in the 60s. The record is almost 11k meters in my world, not sure what they are talking about at 7k
I guess perhaps we have completely different definition of 'research' or something.
All of the news about the SSL security flaws are starting to get boring. We had a related scandal just yesterday. The problem with SSL (or TLS, actually) is that it uses X.509 with all of its problems, like the mixed scope of certification authorities. It's like using global variables in your program - it is never a good idea. I can only agree with Bruce Schneier, Dan Kaminsky and virtually all of the competent security experts that we have to completely abandon the inherently flawed security model of X.509 certificates and finally fully embrace the DNSSEC as specified by the IETF. It is both stupid and irresponsible to have a trust system used to verify domain names in 2011 that is completely DNS-agnostic - and in fact designed in the 1980s when people were still manually sending the etc/hosts files around! There could be a lot of better solutions than the good old X.509 but in reality the only reasonable direction that we can choose today is to use the Domain Name System Security Extensions. Use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 exclusively as your recursive resolvers. Configure your servers and clients. Define and use the RRSIG, DNSKEY, DS, NSEC, NSEC3 and NSEC3PARAM records in all of your zones. Use and verify them on every resolution. Educate people to do the same. This problem will not solve itself. We have to start acting.
Uh, right, because cryptographic operations are free and don't represent a DNS DOS opportunity, right? Oh wait...
After watching the Ghost Recon future soldier demo videos, it seems like the kinect is certainly CAPABLE of actually tracking minute motions (the guy opening and closing his hand to shoot). For example if you just open the calbration menu, you can barely make out your fingers if you open and close your hand unless you are extremely close, but if you boot up the UFC Trainer the little green tracking display in the corner has a much higher level of detail.
Actually, the problem with Kinect is the Xbox360's USB2.0 port - it's not fast enough.
The kinect is equipped with a VGA camera (60fps), and the QVGA IR camera (60fps) and a 4-microphone array. This configuration just barely falls under the current USB bandwidth supported by the 360. And by current, it's what you can achieve with the 360 right now. The theoretical maximum transfer speed for the hardware is around 35MB/sec. Achieving that would let them run the IR camera at full VGA resolution, which should make it possible to detect fingers.
It's very possible Microsoft has got it working in a beta state for the E3 demos, but nothing solid and releasable yet (perhaps the overhead on the CPU is too high - it is USB, after all)
Do you have any reference to the Kinect producing 60 fps? I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
but this is a nice incremental step forward. When my avatar looks like one of the characters in Mass Effect (lip-syncing included) I'll be impressed. I suppose we'll need to wait for the next generation console and Kinect 2.
about businesses? Apple is a consumer electronics company. This topic comes up every few years. It's like Apple is supposed to care about businesses when the majority of their revenue comes from consumers. The notion is entirely misplaced. At best Apple accommodates business customers or perhaps more accurately Apple tries to make it easy for their customers, consumers, to do work too.
pirate, they are motivated enough to buy. I know I can get tons of free stuff off the internet but I don't care enough to bother. Almost all mainstream music, video, movies, novels, etc, are completely worthless. If I had to spend time trying to find it, I'm literally wasting my time.
We (the USA) already restrict certain things based on age. You can't vote until you are 18. You can't drive until you are 16. You can't drink until you are 21. You can't serve in the military until you are 17?. You can't work full time until you are 18. I don't think that anyone is going to propose letting a 5 year old, vote, drink alcohol, drive or work full 40 house a week killing people in the military. If we can restrict all of these things based on age why not restrict sales of games. Unless I am mistaken the law didn't restrict minors from owning or playing the games. If parents want to allow their children to play the games they should be allowed to. Just like parents can (or should be able to) let their children operate a vehicle on private property. Children are not first class citizens. They shouldn't be first class citizens. Restricting sales of violent games, alcohol, pornography, or tobacco should be alright.
And each of them is arbitrary. Give people a test relative to what they want to do and if they pass the test let them do it. Of course then you get into the annoying discussion about what "pass" means but just make the consequences be life or death and then the result will be clear. This is what our ancestors did.
P.S.
You are either not a parent or not a very good one. The government is not a substitute for good parenting.
Basically, Nokia didn't think they could create a strong "ecosystem" for MeeGo. To compete with Apple/iOS and Google/Android they would have needed to do almost *everything* those companies do, and that didn't seem feasible - and they were probably right. Nokia's window of opportunity was 2005-2007 and they missed it. Today, their options were Android and WP7. Most people think they should have gone with Android, but as I understand it, Nokia felt that Microsoft needed them more than Google, and so Nokia would retain more of it's independence with WP7 than it would with Android.
useless for developing an android. Still interesting but comparing it to skin is totally misleading. It's more of a compact sensor of the sort found on robots than something "organic".
Just to clarify: I didn't mean to suggest that Penrose says humans can tell whether *any* algorithm will halt because that's obviously not true. I think what he's trying to get at is that since humans can understand the halting problem at all that there is more to thinking than computation. In any case I'm not trying to defend his point but I don't want to misrepresent him. And so I'm going to stop digging myself deeper into this hole now.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't go off and start talking about LEDs and WDM which just confuses the issue.
http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/optical-computing-diode-1123.html
BT was initially a government run organisation for many years before it was privatized. So they are basically a government created monopoly which was then sold off -mostly to cronies of the government of the era.
This isn't either the free market or the competitive market at work - it is a monopoly unfairly created by the government (by which I mean the public's tax dollars) screwing everyone else over.
Yes but shouldn't Conservatives done more to cut the cord between BT and the government? Maybe broken it up? Or something. Rather than just sit on their hands?
Yeah. It's funny how conservatives the world over always talk the talk about real competition, and yet when push comes to shove they seem the least likely to actually implement it well. They want the free market, which is very rarely the same as the competitive market.
Conservatives, like Communists, wants something that can never exist so that they always have something about which to bitch when convenient, opportune, or advantageous. They gladly turn a blind eye to other non-free aspects of the market when it is to their benefit. Nobody should be shocked by such hypocrisy from politicians but when ideologues start spouting off about the free market I just stop listening.
In other words, they don't know if it will scale.
I know your trying to take a shot, but to answer your question, yes. When did a company become responsible for governments using/misusing thier technology/product? Our own govt. (U.S.) uses Sun boxes and Cisco switches to monitor ME. Think the US government isn't using similar software/hardware to monitor dissidents (Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party, Neo Nazi, etc..). It's a snow job blaming big companies (which is all the rage today). It reminds me when global warming fired up, even the traffic reports changed: Before global warming debate: "Intoxicated man ran over a pedestrian." After: "Intoxicated driver's SUV ran over a pedestrian".
You're an idiot. As a civil society with democratic norms we draw limits to commerce all of the time. For example, we don't allow people to sell human body parts because of the perverse incentives it would create. We could, if we wanted, limit sale of such technology to those countries that misuse it and punish those countries that don't follow suit. The fact is that we, as a society, don't really care that much. Oh, we talk about how horrible it is, but when it comes to hard decisions we always take the easy way out by spouting the kind of nonsense you just did. As far as America doing it too, so what? We are talking about Iran.
point. It's a what-if scenario.
That's what this report demonstrates. Rather than offering bonds that the government would pay interest on, the government could insure AAA bonds for face value and collect payment for that insurance. That would be highly manageable risk and would not make taxpayers beholden to anyone. If investors want to take more risk for more reward with CDAs or whatever then they should go for it but they are on the hook for it. This idea in the report that tax-payer money is the plaything for the rich and the world economy would collapse unless we allowed it is ridiculous.
You still have to have a cable subscription to access the content for most of this content. If anything, it's a step forward in killing the standalone set-top box. This hurts set-top box manufacturers, AppleTV, GoogleTV, and Boxee.
I don't think they've taken a principled stand on anything. And they don't claim to either. They are in it for the lulz. That's it. The tendency to see them as somehow "sticking it to the man" through acts of civil disobedience is totally misplaced.
Due to the extensive illegal use of their product, police have asked Remington to stop the Mexican drug trade.
I like your analogy and I don't support the UK government but if you have knowledge of a crime and do nothing you are an accessory. In this case I think the government will need to prove Google "knows" about a crime.
he set out to build the deepest diving research sub in the world;
Someone should point out that he's a few years late to the race, Trieste did it in the 60s. The record is almost 11k meters in my world, not sure what they are talking about at 7k
I guess perhaps we have completely different definition of 'research' or something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste
So, more Chinese propaganda or is the author so stupid they couldn't use google or both?
All of the news about the SSL security flaws are starting to get boring. We had a related scandal just yesterday. The problem with SSL (or TLS, actually) is that it uses X.509 with all of its problems, like the mixed scope of certification authorities. It's like using global variables in your program - it is never a good idea. I can only agree with Bruce Schneier, Dan Kaminsky and virtually all of the competent security experts that we have to completely abandon the inherently flawed security model of X.509 certificates and finally fully embrace the DNSSEC as specified by the IETF. It is both stupid and irresponsible to have a trust system used to verify domain names in 2011 that is completely DNS-agnostic - and in fact designed in the 1980s when people were still manually sending the etc/hosts files around! There could be a lot of better solutions than the good old X.509 but in reality the only reasonable direction that we can choose today is to use the Domain Name System Security Extensions. Use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 exclusively as your recursive resolvers. Configure your servers and clients. Define and use the RRSIG, DNSKEY, DS, NSEC, NSEC3 and NSEC3PARAM records in all of your zones. Use and verify them on every resolution. Educate people to do the same. This problem will not solve itself. We have to start acting.
Uh, right, because cryptographic operations are free and don't represent a DNS DOS opportunity, right? Oh wait...
What he said.
And then in typical American reactive manner we'll dump a bunch of money into cybersecurity and thereby create the military-IT complex...
"We didn't do it."
Actually, the problem with Kinect is the Xbox360's USB2.0 port - it's not fast enough.
The kinect is equipped with a VGA camera (60fps), and the QVGA IR camera (60fps) and a 4-microphone array. This configuration just barely falls under the current USB bandwidth supported by the 360. And by current, it's what you can achieve with the 360 right now. The theoretical maximum transfer speed for the hardware is around 35MB/sec. Achieving that would let them run the IR camera at full VGA resolution, which should make it possible to detect fingers.
It's very possible Microsoft has got it working in a beta state for the E3 demos, but nothing solid and releasable yet (perhaps the overhead on the CPU is too high - it is USB, after all)
Do you have any reference to the Kinect producing 60 fps? I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
Looks like 30 fps per 2 active people: http://rpad.tv/2010/06/29/xbox-360-kinect-limited-to-two-players-and-640-x-480/
... the airport.
Haha. But I want one I can keep!
but this is a nice incremental step forward. When my avatar looks like one of the characters in Mass Effect (lip-syncing included) I'll be impressed. I suppose we'll need to wait for the next generation console and Kinect 2.
about businesses? Apple is a consumer electronics company. This topic comes up every few years. It's like Apple is supposed to care about businesses when the majority of their revenue comes from consumers. The notion is entirely misplaced. At best Apple accommodates business customers or perhaps more accurately Apple tries to make it easy for their customers, consumers, to do work too.
pirate, they are motivated enough to buy. I know I can get tons of free stuff off the internet but I don't care enough to bother. Almost all mainstream music, video, movies, novels, etc, are completely worthless. If I had to spend time trying to find it, I'm literally wasting my time.
We (the USA) already restrict certain things based on age. You can't vote until you are 18. You can't drive until you are 16. You can't drink until you are 21. You can't serve in the military until you are 17?. You can't work full time until you are 18. I don't think that anyone is going to propose letting a 5 year old, vote, drink alcohol, drive or work full 40 house a week killing people in the military. If we can restrict all of these things based on age why not restrict sales of games. Unless I am mistaken the law didn't restrict minors from owning or playing the games. If parents want to allow their children to play the games they should be allowed to. Just like parents can (or should be able to) let their children operate a vehicle on private property. Children are not first class citizens. They shouldn't be first class citizens. Restricting sales of violent games, alcohol, pornography, or tobacco should be alright.
And each of them is arbitrary. Give people a test relative to what they want to do and if they pass the test let them do it. Of course then you get into the annoying discussion about what "pass" means but just make the consequences be life or death and then the result will be clear. This is what our ancestors did.
P.S.
You are either not a parent or not a very good one. The government is not a substitute for good parenting.
where *obscene* violence is more acceptable than completely *normal* sexuality. It's beyond me. WTF?
Basically, Nokia didn't think they could create a strong "ecosystem" for MeeGo. To compete with Apple/iOS and Google/Android they would have needed to do almost *everything* those companies do, and that didn't seem feasible - and they were probably right. Nokia's window of opportunity was 2005-2007 and they missed it. Today, their options were Android and WP7. Most people think they should have gone with Android, but as I understand it, Nokia felt that Microsoft needed them more than Google, and so Nokia would retain more of it's independence with WP7 than it would with Android.
All very good points. It's still a shame though.
useless for developing an android. Still interesting but comparing it to skin is totally misleading. It's more of a compact sensor of the sort found on robots than something "organic".
I don't get it. This phone looks great.
Just to clarify: I didn't mean to suggest that Penrose says humans can tell whether *any* algorithm will halt because that's obviously not true. I think what he's trying to get at is that since humans can understand the halting problem at all that there is more to thinking than computation. In any case I'm not trying to defend his point but I don't want to misrepresent him. And so I'm going to stop digging myself deeper into this hole now.